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we are launching a new version of DiscourseAnalysis.net. We expect our platform to be fully functional in the next few days again. Registrations for DiscourseNet events such as DNC3-ALED, DN22 and DN23 will work very soon again.

Contact us (Jaspal Singh and Jan Zienkowski) for any questions, problems and suggestions.

Food is a key means through which we construct and represent ourselves discursively. Food features as a powerful cultural signifier, often evoking associations with issues of gender, class, race and power. Food-related activities, such as grocery shopping, meal preparation, and eating, along with the public and private spaces in which these activities occur, provide the basis for many of our complex daily communicative practices. Food also is located at the core of many of the most challenging social issues of our time, often manifested in oppressive relations of inequality, and in the placement of food at the center of calls for social justice.

We are witness to major changes in how the relationships between food systems and consumers are constructed discursively.

Not surprisingly, food has been an important focus of research across the humanities and social sciences, from history to sociology, cultural studies, political studies and beyond. This conference extends that focus by providing an international platform that foregrounds the role of communication in the production, distribution and consumption of food. The aim of the conference is to address discourses, texts and communication evolving in relation to both widespread dissatisfaction with existing foodsystems and to visions for a more sustainable and regenerative future of food.

Scholars are invited to explore the cultural and discursive construction of food. This may include analyses of political and policy texts on food sovereignty, and security, food safety and nutrition, foodwaste, sustainability and climate change; texts produced by the food industry, including advertising, packaging, labeling, menus, social media and other means of food marketing; consumer and media narratives on “the pleasures of the table”; and texts promoting gastronomic tourism, to name just a few.

Today, cumulative food-related crises and controversies have become central to ongoing attempts to address the health of the global population and the planet. As a result, we are witness to major changes in how the relationships between food systems and consumers are constructed discursively.

In response to these issues, scholars are welcome to explore narratives about the emergence of alternative solutions to, and new imaginaries about, the future of food.

1

Food as cultural signifier / text / medium, including food as:

Expression of cultural identity

Cultural capital

Object of commodity activism

Expression of cultural appropriateness

Expression of cultural appropriation

Basis of ritual and community bonding

2

Representations of food, including:

Journalistic and documentary coverage of the food and agricultural industries